Starting or Growing a Virtual Assistant Business

We got a comment on one of our Podcasts from a visitor named Collette Schultz. Her question about the Virtual Assistant industry is one we get pretty frequently, so I thought I’d include my reply here as a post.

Collette Schultz on October 26th, 2008 11:21 pm

As a new virtual assistant subcontractor I’m getting into researching the VA industry through podcasts. I listened to this one last week and am bound to hear more. What I find most frustrating is knowing where to start. Do you offer a beginners series to help getting started?

While we have never blogged or done a segment specifically on Virtual Assisting, I do not believe it differs greatly from other types of internet based businesses: that is to say that it relies mostly on abilities and training, networking, and marketing.

There are several places people can obtain training to become a virtual assistant or, as in Collette’s case, improve their existing skill base; some of them offer certification:

Certification Programs

• AssistU
• International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA)
• VA Certification
• Certified Virtual Professional (Thanks to Collette for this resource!)

Our Jumpstart Kit is also intended to improve people’s fundamental skills with virtual teamwork and remote work technology. Also, Phil wrote a book called Lose Your Commute about finding legitimate work-from-home opportunities in general and it contains a lot of insights and resources. Read more

Tips to improve your web searches

In my last blog post I explained how to use Google Alerts to automate your most common web searches and have Google deliver pertinent information directly to your inbox.  However the sad truth is that most people don’t know some of the basic techniques and strategies for searching the web effectively and narrowing down the often thousands of search results to key in on the specific information they want.

If you are like many people you take a shotgun approach to searching the web by typing in a few simple words and then wasting time weeding though pages and pages of results looking for the articles or websites that contain the information you are looking for.

I recently discovered a great series of web videos called The Common Craft Show. There website features a series of short explanatory videos that explain often complex topics in plain English. They use an innovative and entertaining video/animation style they call “paperworks” and publish a new video about once a month.

The video here features their easy to understand explanation of how to search the web more effectively.  Watch this short video and improve your web searches today!

Save time and automate your web searches with Google Alerts

If you’re like me you probably spend a good deal of time on the web searching for information. It might be  industry news, mentions of yourself or business in the press, news stories for your blog or newsletter, or how to get ink stains out of your rug.  Let’s face it the web, for most people, has become the first place we go to look for news and information.

What if I told you that you could have the equivalent of a team of researchers keeping their eye on the web for you and finding all of the latest information on all of the searches you need to do – and they would email this valuable data to you either weekly or daily right to your inbox – all for free? Interested?

Well I’m going to let you in on one of the most useful automation tools I’ve discovered – Google Alerts.  Google has expanded way beyond their normal basic search function.  They offer a staggering array of software, services, and online tools.  One often overlooked gem is Google Alerts – which is a service they offer that notifies you by email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Read more

Spontaneous and Informal Communication in Virtual Teams

One of the sticking points of successful virtual teamwork is the importance of informal communication. Look at any study or assessment of a globally distributed team and you will see informal communication on any top 10, top 7, top 5, or even top 3 list as an indicator of a cohesive, high-functioning team – and a harbinger of success.

And yet, many virtual teams – especially at the management and executive level – resist investing time and energy into developing informal communication among team members. Perhaps it is because the idea of informal communication is so elusive, and it can seem counter-intuitive to encourage people to communicate on non-work related or ‘off-topic’ subjects during work time.

It is a misconception that all, or even most, informal communication is ‘did you see the game last night?’ or ‘have you seen that new movie?’ type of talk. Much of what people communicate about spontaneously is about the minute by minute project decisions and complications that are the crux of most information work.

I also believe it is a mistake to under-value a reasonable amount of casual interaction among co-workers and team members. In fact, I would encourage any virtual team to develop FORMAL ways to communicate INFORMALLY – weird, I know. Read more

Dropping Outlook for Webmail (an update on my adventures in cloud computing)

It was almost a year ago when I posted about my 60 day experiment to stop using Outlook as my primary email program and contact manager and instead moved to a web-based email system. Several people commented on that posting and I felt it was time for an update.

Let me say that after having moved my email onto the web I have been much happier and accessing my email is much more flexible. In fact, that move has prompted me to move  other services I need, such as my calendar and to do list, to the cloud.

So let me briefly review what is no longer an experiment, but is now the new way I am working.  First off, as for email, although I started by using Yahoo Mail Plus – after about 4 months I decided to give Google Apps and Gmail a try.  There were a number of things I liked about Yahoo but there were some things that made me crazy too – such as often losing a message while writing it for no reason (the screen would just go blank), plus a big problem: the Yahoo Calendar. This is where Yahoo lost me as a user and Google won. Read more

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